Miss Manners.

Home Alone? Let Etiquette Keep You Company

February 25, 1999|By Judith Martin, United Features Syndicate.

When you're at home alone with the shades drawn, you can do whatever you want, Miss Manners once declared magnanimously.

She did not pause after this announcement to be thanked for her generous burst of liberality. Perhaps she didn't care to give anyone time to ask what she imagined she could have done about it if she did want to regulate the way people behaved at home alone.

Be that as it may, etiquette governs only human interaction. Even if you want to be rude, you can't be if there is no one around to offend. Therefore, behavior that affects no one else should be conveniently placed just outside Miss Manners' jurisdiction.

Until the proliferation of the home office, this arrangement suited her very well. It's not as though anyone in the rudeness-extermination business is obliged to rustle up targets. The population has been very forthcoming.

Miss Manners was therefore off-duty when people were safely at home and she could -- well, she doesn't want to say "loosen her stays," as she comes from a time that kept underwear under wraps and considered unmentionables unmentionable. So we will just say that when others retired into privacy and solitude, she knew she could breathe a sigh of relief.

Now she is beginning to rethink the deal. An awful lot of people now spend the day home alone, and most of them feel well enough to get into etiquette trouble.

They can already do this on the telephone and with the army of people who like to ring other people's doorbells, but this has always been Miss Manners' business because others are on the receiving end. Even though today's door-to-door salespeople are more likely to be offering their convictions than something of more immediate practical value, their ringing may be ignored or they may be gently sent on their way with a firm, brief statement of not being interested, but they may not be insulted.

People who are at home with children always have to be polite, as well -- not only because children are people, approximately, but to teach through example in ways that they will not live to regret.

Miss Manners is tempted to expand her jurisdiction to include those who really are alone in the privacy of their own former guest rooms. It is one thing to allow a short respite from etiquette for people who are going to spend most of their day in situations where they have to worry about how they will affect others; it is another to give them the whole day off every day.

This is especially urgent as she knows how a great many of them spend the day: Not dressed and maybe not even clean, not using table manners to eat, and maybe not even using tables.

Miss Manners is going to have to do some lively talking to justify messing in their habits -- especially since distaste at having others do so may have motivated them to work at home in the first place.